Lycos Asia, a joint venture between Terra Lycos and SingTel, has launched a campaign to promote new features and capabilities of its recently upgraded Lycos Search engine to Internet users in the region. The regional campaign, worth more than S$4 million (US$2.2 million), will be spent on advertising and promotional activities.

"Looking at the way Internet technology is evolving and how Asian users are getting more savvy about surfing for information, we have to constantly examine our products and services, and look into various ways of improving and providing the best user experience possible," said Bernard Chan, Lycos Asia's vice-president of Marketing.

Taking just shy of six months to complete, the new Lycos Search is being rolled out with these enhancements when searching for information at all 11 Lycos Asia localized sites: three levels of search including a locally compiled, country specific directory; an Asia-wide directory; and a worldwide directory powered by Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST), a developer of Internet search technology.

According to Lycos Asia officials, Internet users will have immediate access to the largest, most comprehensive and up-to-date Web catalog indexing more than 600 million full-text Web pages, which include more than 17 million Chinese language documents. They will also be able to perform searches for MP3, FTP or multimedia files.

The Lycos Ultimate Search Challenge promotion will be in full force until July 31, 2001, and is available in multiple languages - English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Thai and Bahasa Indonesia. Internet users stand to win round-the-world air tickets to any destination, on top of attractive weekly prizes.